Australia is becoming a surveillance state
ia.acs.org.au
ia.acs.org.au
Corporate interests own the media, politicians, food production, education etc. and no one cares, because Life Is Good. Why expect anything to change, or people to care about strong democratic institutions, when there is no incentive for them to care about abstract concepts such as privacy or governmental oversight.
Decades of bull markets, house price increases, a decline in public education, torpedoed communication infrastructure and complicit "independent" media has resulted in a wealthy, ignorant and complacent society who allow their representatives full control over their lives. It is not that they don't care about these issues, they are not even aware they are issues at all.
But who cares, when you can go to the beach?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28139889
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/10/protest-stop-c...
Hilariously, Australians protest about their rights by trying their best to extend lockdowns further [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/24/anti-...
I didn't protest the lockdowns because it seems reasonable to me that you'd want to ban proximity to curtail the spread of a disease that spreads by proximity. That doesn't mean I won't protest a dictator just declaring an emergency and violating everyone's rights.
This does seem a pretty common misconception. People seem to forget that even the most liberal countries still regularly and systematically infringe on people's rights, e.g. by imprisoning criminals. But you don't see many of the anti-lockdown types protesting the existence of prisons.
In both cases, it's a matter of proportionally balancing the loss of individual rights with the interests (and indeed, other conflicting rights) of the community as a whole.
If you’re saying a government shouldn’t be locking people up so that an individuals rights aren’t violated, then you’re saying a government shouldn’t be looking after the wellbeing of its people. In which case, you’re essentially talking about anarchy.
How far along the spectrum does the emergency need to get to justify a lockdown?
For example
- The Black Plague which killed 30%~ of Europe. At what point would a lockdown be justified?
- Germany just invaded my northern border. Again. Am I allowed to force my residents to turn their lights off to avoid bombing?
Rights aren't universal, and no serious person argues this. There is always an emergency that's bad enough.
The question is 'what is bad enough' and this has no scientific answer. The answer is up to the government of the day, and the population who can decide whether to turf that government.
I feel like this is the point of contention. Many people truly don't consider things that can be taken away a right. Is the constitution a suicide pact a serious question that has been argued in the US Supreme Court (that phrased originated by a justice arguing that it wasn't... he was in the minority opinion).
I will try to keep this neutral, but people say things like "driving isn't a right, it's a priveledge"... what distinguishes between rights and priveledges?
How's that boot polish tasting?
That's a bit condescending. In recent weeks there were tens of thousands of people marching on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne to protest covid lockdowns and defend their right to free assembly.
Perfect example, nicely done.
As an Aussie I must say that I see these protests rather differently. For better or worse, Australia has gotten used to having zero COVID: people here tend to see the protesters not as brave individuals defending their rights, but as idiots who recklessly endanger the lives of others by spreading disease through a largely unvaccinated populace. Many people here are of the opinion that some ‘fundamental’ rights can and should be suspended in a critical emergency.
Thankfully only 3,500 in Sydney out of a population of 5 million. Fortunately the vast majority of Australians aren't completely selfish and thoughtless. Nobody likes lockdowns. The government doesn't benefit from them, it's not lining some evil overlord's pockets.
It feels to me that Australia will be a country suffering from PTSD once it finds a way out of the pandemic and impossible dream of zero covid.
(For comparison, here in Europe, the pandemic is largely over, and our vaccination wall is looking strong enough that even what's coming over winter shouldn't be too bad.)
They aren't benefiting from anything: the governments are all rightly tanking in popularity, and being held up by Rupert Murdoch's multi-decadal commitment to dumbing down the narrative.
When we're not in pandemic conditions, people are quite welcome to gather and protest whatever the heck they want.
Question: why is there not a flu pandemic every year? Answer: because the flu is not a novel virus, and does not hit the population in the same way. The flu can be very severe, which is why we vaccinate against it, but within any given population there is a multitude of degrees of existing immunity from previous rounds of flu through the population.
COVID-19 is a novel virus - no human on Earth until 1.5 years ago had ever been infected with it, and it's spread follows the expectation of a novel virus: with no prior immunity, the entire population is initially infectable.
This, obviously however, is not a continuing situation: prior infection with COVID-19 confers immunity against COVID-19, as well as effective immunity against the variant mutations which have arisen. There have not been cases of reinfection within over a year. Even if COVID-19 can infect vaccinated populations, it does so with less severe outcomes, and having done so leaves behind a reservoir of now immune recipients.
In fact even if a new COVID-19 strain arose well after infection, people who had been exposed or vaccinated to earlier strains would not present the sort of completely vulnerable population which the initial COVID-19 virus represented.
COVID-19 is now going to be an endemic disease, but that hardly means people will keep catching up, but instead that in any given year a small subset of the population is likely to contract it and recover - possibly requiring medical intervention, but this is a number which can be managed and planned for.
What has made COVID-19 a problem though, is the novel nature of the virus and it's rapid spread. We are perfectly able to deal with expected loads on healthcare, but not with a surge of 10-20% of the entire population of a country within a 6-12 month window with over a month of recovery time. But against a vaccinated population that figure falls by almost 92-96%, with 60-70% of people never developing symptoms. That is a manageable number over the same time frame.
COVID-19 is not like the flu, and infectious novel diseases will always require immediate and drastic countermeasures. An ideal outcome for COVID-19 would have been containment in Wuhan: it would have lent plenty of time to develop, test, and incorporate into routine vaccine schedules innoculations against it.
We all keep good spacing (1.5m) between each other, wear face masks, etc.
Very, very different to the protests apparently, judging by the photos in the newspapers.
Australia is a largely apathetic country, complacent because of their own wealth and removal from the international community.
But the situation is going to turn quite negatively for Australia, its becoming progressively worse because nobody actually believes in anything fundamental. We keep installing savvy businessmen politicians rather than people with a longterm vision for the country.
The result is exacerbating social problems. It makes you think where the countries priorities are when homelessness in Melbourne has gotten terribly worse in the past 7 years. People rather maximise their gains on the property market, borrowing exorbitant amounts of money to buy property they cant really afford, meanwhile devaluing the currency.
The result is the social fabric of a nation disintegrating.
Most EU countries are not sovereign states, given by the fact they don’t control their borders nor their economy (See Greece, or the other affectionately named PIGS countries). There is an insane amount of influence from Germany and Belgium.
This is a glasshouses and stones situation.
You know what they say: everybody is a genius in a bull market.
So you have sun, good food, plenty of money and little immigration.
Life is good (if you are not living in the desert naked).
Unfortunatly, there is nowhere in the world where things stay nice and easy. The run ended in europe after 1970, it ended in the US after 1990 and it will end in Autralia.
Now, when things are getting hard, having weak democratic institutions, no political awareness and corporate medling is going to hit hard.
But I wouldn't be too cocky because it's not like we didn't mess up loads of things in our own countries, even if we have strong political commitment.
Besides, if I could enjoy your life style, I would probably be way less sensitive to privacy issues.
So don't take what I said as the words of someone who has the ethical upper hand, because I certainly don't.
And Australia is damn comfy.
Also my partner will probably convince me to go back live there with her at one point, so I'll enjoy it as much as I can.
I wouldn't be so sure that they'll ever need to abandon their crutch of geological resources. There's nothing particularly industrious or forward-looking about Australia, precisely because they can dig up dirt and sell it at a premium.
The book anti-fragile have a very good bit on that.
The point is everything moves, nothing stays the same, good and bad runs go hand in hand.
But imagine if a dictator of the last century had access to Facebook social graph...
You gotta be careful when it's good, to not have it too bad when it's getting bad later
What is stupid, with Europe and the USA both planning a tax on carbon, in just a few decades the OP's wish will most likely come true, yet Australia keeps wishing for a different future.
Every side of politics has acted like complete cowards on this issue, with the Liberals the worst offenders - they pay it lip service every election then do nothing while handing out cash to the coal miners.
No amount of economic wealth is going to help once the environment has been damaged beyond repair.
There was a smear campaign in 2016 regarding a state-wide blackout, caused by severe weather affecting the distribution & transmission infrastructure. [see #1] The incumbant political party used this as an opportunity to blame the renewable generators (and state government, from the "opposite side" of politics). [see #2]
The same severe weather event would have affected any power generator.
[1] https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesale-markets/compliance-reportin... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Australian_blackout...
Instead, the incumbant governments just subsidise the inumbant industries; or rather, the existing "winners". (E.g. subsidising Murdoch media, mining companies, all pulling in millions/billions in profit.)
Australia has one of the lowest rankings in terms of economic complexity [see #1]. Until the government can subsidise emerging markets, there's no reason for businesses to take risks - the low population can't support it.
Propping up existing industries will eventually be a failing strategy. When Australia's "luck" (exploitable resources) runs out, "what comes after will not be so comfortable". But there's still time to steer away from that discomfort. (Unlike the imminent ecology collapse...)
[1] https://www.aumanufacturing.com.au/astralias-low-economic-co...
Australia has one of the highest rates of inbound immigration in the world. Number 2 in the OECD actually, right after Luxembourg.
And I, like the overwhelming majority of Australians, consider high immigration intakes to be a good thing.
Check your sources.
[1] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/migratio...
[2] https://data.oecd.org/migration/foreign-born-population.htm
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1133441/australia-attitu...
Also, I consider it a chance to be able to go to school as well, it doesn't mean exams are easy.
Immigration is the same. It gives, and it takes.
Because australia is an island with a pretty good legal filter for immigrants, they get less social tensions.
Also because they have plenty of space and money, right now they can welcome immigrants way more easily.
And finally because immigration from asia is a good part of the immigration source, which also makes things easier culturally.
The situations is different in every part of the world.
Immigration is not a single variable universal phenomenom.
Today if you talk about the challenge that diversity can bring, you are labelled with pretty harshed words. But nothing is free.
Source: I've been an immigrant a lot.
I grew up here in our system and was only vaguely aware there was even a second verse in our national anthem. The people trying to become citizens here and have only been here for a short time knew _all_ the words.
Like, you don't think all the people in India or The Philippines or Chad need doctors or economic advancement?? It's just incredibly greedy and selfish. Can you imagine what a person who has just lost their child due to a preventable illness from being unable to see a doctor think when they hear some privileged person from an unimaginably wealthy country that already has an order of magnitude more doctors per capita and whose children will never see the suffering theirs routinely do -- boasting how wonderful it is that they are harvesting all the best healthcare workers from their country. Makes you shudder to think about it really.
These same people will bemoan a corporation from their country going to another one to conduct a resource extraction business (exploitation!) and yet when it comes to their own interests, they are quite happy to take and exploit a less well off country's most valuable resource which is its human capital.
Most of the people I talk to in Australia are more concerned about all the people that DON'T get let in.
Another lens is that countries are in the business of providing defence, governance, economic opportunity and lifestyle services. Immigrants are customers.
It is neocolonialism because it is extracting the most valuable and profitable resources of less well off countries for your own benefit. Sure they can't compete with the massive incentives offered by the uber wealthy countries. Probably because those wealthy countries have been exploiting their resources including human capital in the past which keeps them poor and dependent.
But they should be thankful that their children get to sew shoes for us for a few cents a day.
Suppose we take the Phillipines and Malaysia, they (together) have about 6x the population of Australia. They have the capacity to train a lot of doctors - and a doctor can have a great life in either of those countries.
They can both also produce doctors more efficiently than Australia, partly due to living costs / ppp and population size, and partly due to Baumol's disease hitting education costs harder in AU.
But let's be honest, no country is talent-limited on doctor production. What's limited are training slots, and that is partly a practical concern... but also licensing restrictions - which tend to be regulated by doctors who have a strong interest in avoiding the oversupply of doctors.
What I am trying to say with all this is that there are many reasons someone might not be getting good medical care in say, the Phillipines but those reasons are not primarily due to doctors emigrating.
Skimming their best resources off the top can't be justified by some dry economic formula (if it happens to be correct) that just by pure coincidence results in a worse outcome for that poorer country and a better outcome for the wealthier one. Colonialists had all sorts of economic arguments too.
I would agree that the Phillipines are under-supplied according to OECD ratios but again, I don't think the problem is emigration.
Personally I think your mental model of these countries is out-of-date. They are sophisticated and industrialised but do have high inequality and some governance problems. As usual, it's a distribution problem. I think you are under-estimating their capacity and they are not at all lacking in talent, education or human resources. Australia is lucky to get skilled migrants but is by no means "draining" them. I think I'd want to see a more quantitative argument before I was willing to accept that.
There is a difference between that and the systemic concerted efforts by wealthy countries to poach and take the most valuable, skilled, educated of the human capital from poorer countries who are in positions of weakness and far less bargaining power.
I understand that the narrative is that it's about "helping the unfortunates", but really it's not. If a country wanted to help people you wouldn't "help" mainly the ones who can give them something (they are actually helping you), leaving the many more less fortunate ones in an even worse state.
In Germany(already a wealthy country) doctors move to Switzerland for better pay and better working conditions too.
It’s also very expensive to move internationally. Visas can cost up to $10,000 alone, so I doubt that so many people actually leave developing countries for developed ones.
There are also tons of people who would never move countries because their family and social circle is in that particular place or they want to make their country a better place.
I also think many people move back home from overseas to their home country, bringing their improved skillset with them.
I think you're rationalizing or painting yourself a reality that you wish was true. Brain drain from disadvantaged countries on an industrial scale is a serious problem. Not for the wealthy privileged countries who benefit of course, which is why nobody says much about it and those who do get attacked.
Now that is meaningless. There are a whole vast range of ways to be exploitative and wealthy and powerful taking from poor and powerless.
> not private citizens having the option to leave often abusive governments.
I'm talking about the aggregate outcome for the people. The greater good. It's funny the disconnect some people have here between being so fast to denounce "individualism" greed, selfishness etc., in their own countries when they see it is a detriment to them. And yet they go completely the other way when it's a benefit to them and a detriment to people of other countries. That's the height of selfishness and hypocrisy as I see it.
> By your definition, neocolonialism is simply the absence of serfdom.
No it's not.
The collective outcome may be bad for the country from which people emigrate, but the individual outcome is very good for the people who emigrate. And at a higher level of organisation, the importance of retaining one's best and brightest creates incentives for all governments to behave better than they would if it was accepted the people born in a country belonged to the rulers like some kind of global slavery system.
Trying to say it's either the industrial harvesting of the most skilled people from less advantaged countries, or it's "serfdom" is just outlandish. I don't even know where to start with that!
Graduates: 58% yes
Non-Graduates: 24% yes"
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/10/72-of-aussies-do-no...
Not overwhelming.
Also there are some people who are happy with immigration, but only from other culturally-compatible regions, and as long as diversity (eg. max 10% from any one country) and equality (eg. max 49% males from any one country) is part of the intake.
Many living in democracies will find this true for their country.
Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.
There have been lots of people offloaded to far away places for resource extraction as you call it. People adapt to the demands.
I think this is a borders on odd expectations of people.
Going by this Irish and Chinese sent over for railroad building were superfluous people.
But no, it's not expecting too much of people to think they might retain their civilization when they willingly and gleefully go take up ownership of a plantation in a colony. Frankly, the Irish and Chinese in America were far more civilized than the Boers ever were, because they had to be. The Boers just showed up somewhere they could act like petty gods over black people and they did, until they forgot civilization completely.
When I lived in Australia I was really surprised, because I expected to find a country much more individualistic and hardy than the soft United States. All those Crocodile Dundee movies, I guess. I had the luck of moving there with a partner who was half-Filipina, and wow was there a lot of anti-Asian racism right off the bat. But that wouldn't have been such a big deal. What really struck me were the micro-restrictions on everything.
I think local councils have a lot to do with this; in the Commonwealth model they seem to have totally arbitrary and uncontrolled power. If you squeal your wheels, they'll take your car and crush it. At least that's what I heard. If you work on roofs you have to spend an hour gearing up to have harnesses. I mean. I thought this was a frontier society, but it's not. Cameras everywhere and ...well, I lived in King's Cross, Sydney for a bit, but I heard they basically shut that down by fiat from end to end.
And the NT. Just a word about that. We pulled up to a shop in the bush outside Tenant Creek and there were approximately 40 aboriginal ladies standing outside a closed window at 9am. We walked past this line, straight inside, and bought a couple cases of beer. Asked why they were all waiting there. "Waitin for the welfare window," said the store owner. Never been to the white side of a segregation window before, but that was something to see in a first world country.
But what I found was an ultra-tedious nitpicky rules and control mindset. Really turned me off.
Just surprised to see someone else say similar.
Oh, you thought you could cross the road there, even though there are no cars around? You shouldn't do that. You should cross at the stop signs.
Oh, you thought you could just walk in the building, go up to the counter and order food? Sorry, you need to walk through the special door, which puts you in the special food-ordering queue. You'll have to leave the building and come back in through the special door.
Sure, you won't get pulled over for going a little bit faster on the freeway in the USA. But in daily life, people much more often will treat you like you're dumb, incompetent, or don't belong somewhere.
A couple of examples came up in recent news opinion pieces (both by Americans who have moved to Australia and, coincidentally, both mentioning swimming):
https://www.smh.com.au/national/where-the-hell-is-he-what-au...
"It went on like that for a while. Praise for the boy. Not a drop of concern. I looked to my right. Baz’s Nippers instructor, Al, a brawny former professional rugby player, was smiling. So were the rest of the Australian parents all around us.
I was confused at first, but I could also see in everyone an exhilaration that reminded me of my time covering the war in Iraq during its most violent months. It had been years since I’d experienced that mix of feelings – the electric shock of appreciation for life, the confidence that comes from transcending danger with others, for something that feels bigger than yourself. And it made me realise that, despite a journalism career filled with hazardous assignments, I still had a lot to learn about risk, not to mention child-rearing."
https://www.smh.com.au/national/77-shootings-within-a-mile-o...
"Taking the kids for a swim at an outdoor public pool in New York felt more like a brush with the penal system. You are not allowed to wear any colour other than white, such is the fear of a poolside eruption of gang violence. Men have to wear bathers lined with meshing, and prove to the guards at the gates they are in compliance; a guard carries out inappropriately intrusive inspections. [...] "Any form of reading matter – newspapers, books, copies of The New Yorker – is strictly prohibited. In all, there are more than a dozen regulations that have to be adhered to – and even if you comply with those, there is the Kafkaesque possibility of being confronted with new ones that have seemingly been invented on the spot."
More coming: https://atlantablackstar.com/2021/08/10/it-was-just-disbelie...
When a white girl lobbies her principal about this, part of his dismissal is "well, you should know the black parents all agreed to this at the PTA meeting, too", as if that was some validation, rather than some amazingly awkward, duressed situation where the all white school board and PTA says "we have a motion to discuss de-segregating the prom", and some parents being quite likely fearful to vote. (I say that, because in this situation, the tie between the book and the girl is that her black boyfriend was shot dead by one of her family members for being on their property).
The notion that systemic racism in the US was a solved problem when MLK stood up and said "I have a dream..." is still far too popular.
Your position is that a black educator in the Atlanta Public School system that has a black mayor and is defiantly against the mainstream of rural southern politics, decided to segregate the students for what reason exactly?
I would venture to guess using this weird thing called "empathy" where i try to look at the other side in good faith is that the female POC Principal wanted to make sure there were classes where the black students werent a small minority in their classes. My understanding of how the makeup of this school in particular was that it was not made up of predominantly black students and that the classes the black students were concentrated into were about half black when it came to students.
I would further venture to guess that it was just a tone def attempt to make it so those students were around "more people like them". This is the whole rationale of poc only safe spaces on college campuses.
Alternatively there was some conspiracy where the black female principal was pressured into doing this by someone. Seeing as how the Atlanta school board immediately cracked down on it that seems unlikely. But maybe the evil pta pressured her? Let me know which scenario you think is more likely.
I certainly wasn't saying that an evil PTA was threatening to lynch the principal if she didn't. But to discount the challenges faced by a system in a state which -to this day- has horrendous issues with systemic racism in the education system, and state that they entirely don't have an impact, subconscious or conscious on people within that system goes against every study and observation.
Much of it was "nudge nudge wink wink private event, not school", but at least one school in Georgia had two proms every year, the "prom" and the "white prom". I'll leave it as a thought exercise to figure out, while not explicitly stated in the organization of those events, who was welcome at each.
It’s quite clear we actually do consider a roof worth dying for. We build them knowing that some people will die after all.
That being said, when I moved to the bay area I was horrified by how rickety US scaffolding was, surprised every government building (including schools!) had visible armed security and metal detectors, and thought it was ridiculous that shops had signs saying "frozen burritos bought with EBT can't be microwaved" (because that would make it fast food instead of groceries). Culture shock can be like that. You can take a lot for granted about your native culture.
I've spent a good chunk of my adulthood living in various countries in Europe, and Australia.
Europhilic nonsense such as in the GP betray their almost total lack of understanding as to the actual state of affairs in European countries.
Corruption is everywhere. Corporate interests influence policy.. everywhere. Moronic government decisions abound.. literally everywhere. Nasty media companies... everywhere. Imperfect educational systems ... everywhere. The racism in Western Europe is _significantly_ worse, I can tell you that from personal experience. in Europe, you can be the wrong kind of white in your OWN country - just talk to some Catalans or Basques about what that's like...
...but of course your country kid from Tamworth will have no idea of any of that while they go off clubbing in Berlin or living their French food fantasy in Lyon because 1 - They don't speak the language, which means 2 - They can't understand the news and also means 3 - They can't talk to actual locals about what real life is like there.
Yet EuRopE is So mUCh bEttEr.
(Just wait until they start interacting with the German, French or Spanish bureaucracies and see what kind of tune they're singing after 2 years.. )
And even worse, they think the English speaking populace of any country is a reflection of what the rest of that country is like. The naivete is astounding. Literally the worst kind of Australian that exists.
Yes, European Countries, except some ex-soviet countries are better than Usa (excluded California or New York probably) on social matters aside maybe personal opportunities due to a Left-Conservatory enviroments
There are bits and pieces that I like about Asian countries as well. For instance, I would love USA to have a larger repair and hacker culture like Shenzhen. A ritualistic and respectful culture as Japan. A more socially cohesive culture as India.
I also think USA has some aspects that I don’t want to give up - philosophically, the constitutional rights and materialistically, the cost of living, job market, access to natural beauty and availability of land.
You know Racism is about ethnicity (+culture) not the colour of your skin, right?
I would only support an actual ban on mobility if it were to quarantine the virus in one place, like if the Chinese had locked down Wuhan before it managed to get out.
That ship has sailed of course. It’s all over the damn place, so there is not much to be gained by travel bans.
Also, we’ve instituted mandatory hotel quarantine for anyone coming to Australia. But hotel quarantine only has a certain number of places; if less people leave Australia, then less people will come back and fill up hotel quarantine spaces.
You could always leave. Citizens and PRs could always come back (although if they left after a certain date they had to pay for their care if they got Covid).
Even immigrants workers could leave. You needed permission to come back, but unless Covid was raging they took in quite a lot of workers.
This is true however return for foreigners was never guaranteed. It has opened up only very recently. I've been stuck in Singapore for 2 years as of last weekend.
You are right there was no guarantee you could return if Covid cases exploded, but there was at least a decent pathway. Australia from what I gathered put up as many obstacles as possible AND requires permission to leave.
Exemptions have been granted for people who were told "if you can fly charter, not commercial, you can be exempted", and other things that are (while certainly risk reducing) very much "show me the money". i.e. exactly the people who will be engaging in tax minimization/avoidance/dodging.
Me? Best hope my elderly parents don't get unwell.
Police investigative powers are an example of this balancing of rights. They need investigative powers to enforce the laws which protect our freedoms. The flip side is that investigative powers can easily be twisted to become surveillance, then be used to take away our freedoms. I don't know what the solution to this conflict is. I don't think anyone knows, which is why the state automatically seeks overreaching powers and the opposition seeks prohibition rather than offering solutions.
If you need to "balance" the rights (read: take them away) of somebody to equal the scale, then rights don't exist in the first place.
Also, anyone think that a US civilian militia has more than a snowball's chance in hell against any committed government-deployed force?
Tell 'im 'e's dreamin'
When push comes to shove, guns allow normal people to escalate violence to the point the government stops MUCH quicker and faster than without guns.
I don't really understand what you mean here?
You pull your gun out and threaten a government representative, and you will be dead or in handcuffs within 30 minutes.
Maybe your idea of civilian government overthrow could come true if you could somehow gather thousands of people with guns who are against the government simultaneously, but other than that, it's over. And even if you do manage to gather those people, it's over when the national guard arrives.
Escalating violence doesn't work when you're massively outgunned, or do you have your own Apache helicopters, armed drones and tanks? Do you think they will hesitate to attack armed terrorists trying to overthrow the "democratically elected" government?
I'm not American so please explain what I'm missing here.
If there was a tyranny and a rebellion, the cops are going to think twice about going out and about without full force since they might be ambushed.
Alot of this sort of situation: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54137838
It does not work like in the movies. If you're in your house and someone is trying to kill you with a weapon, it will take the cops 15 minutes to your door ... and 30 minutes before they come in, minimum. If a unit has been lost (meaning a cop already got hurt), it will take hour before they come to the door, minimum. Some places (such as the court house) have different rules.
As soon as a unit has been lost, they will FIRST do a cost-benefit analysis of retaliating at all. And, especially in large cities, that analysis will regularly come up with something akin to "just let them deliver the drugs and do ... nothing" or "just let them go". Even when non-lethal (and "non-lethal" as in a knife) weapons are used they may refuse. You see, not getting maimed (even a little bit) is a thoroughly essential part of having any sort of career, and the treatment wounded cops get certainly does not justify self-sacrifice. The kinder logic is that criminals don't stop after one crime. If it's needed to stop them, there will be another chance.
Working this way means that for even a large metro area they can maybe handle 5 to 10 serious situations at any one time. Police weapons, even the big ones, do not defeat even relatively small determined militias. And the police will abandon neighbourhoods long before it comes anywhere near this point.
If they truly the think the situation will escalate without end, they may go in. That, by the way, generally means snipers, not knocking down the door. If they don't think the situation will escalate, or if there's too many people, or ... they will just let it be.
The government order is acted on by a person, at the end of the day. During the lockdowns my City authority closed all public parks including the one across the street from my house. They also retasked all Parks & Recreation employees to sit in the parks and yell at anyone using the parks. Many citizens, myself included, outright ignored the P&R staff and continued to make use of the park under the threat of "calling the police." Even after the lockdown ended and parks re-opened, the staff at our local park continued with their own "closure."
However, at no point did officers respond let alone use state-sanctioned violence against citizens. That a government flunky gives an order does not mean it will be enforced let alone result in violence from authorities.
Ultimately, this is a continuous function rather than a boolean as you're implying. Citizen ownership of arms helps juice that function in our favor.
The guns are there for when the legal way to solve stuff no longer works and laws are no longer of any meaning. Saying its against the law to use them or that law enforcement will enforce any law no matter what is pure ignorance. Civil wars happens and if there is one you better hope both sides have guns because else its not a war its a takeover.
And depending on the relations the US has with 2-3 particular nations we would likely see an invasion thrown on top.
It is, until it isn't.
> Also, anyone think that a US civilian militia has more than a snowball's chance in hell against any committed government-deployed force?
See: Middle East
That's always tricky because the most successful examples of a guerilla army winning like that are all a foreign army coming into a local rebelling population. They mostly work by just wearing down the invaders until the cost and time requirements wear heavy enough that the foreign army decides to just go home, that same dynamic doesn't map as well when it's the state fighting for it's own survival to me.
My biggest point is that all the often cited success stories of a guerilla army winning against any modern military are all on a home turf vs invading army (and the guerilla forces are often heavily backed by outside forces or backed up by an actual regular army like in Vietnam). There are completely different incentives there, on the extreme end of things losing means you might be killed
Also don't be so sure about Cuba if you're talking about the current situation, it's far from over and they're not exactly a peer comparison to make to a theoretical US insurgency.
Do you think the guns in civilian ownership are to be used for foreign wars? They are exactly for homeland invasion.
And who will back the US with arms? In the examples you gave it’s a richer country, or multiple, helping a poorer country. Who’s going to help the richest country in its death throes? What will be the benefit for all that aid should that nation fall? It’s better to pre-stage the weapons as that also serves to deter those that think the US is inadequately armed.
When presented with historical events supporting these claims your response is “cannot say with certainty”…
The interesting and terrifying part is, if I were China or Russia, I would be online trying to convince the US to disarm itself too.
I am not taking sides in the underlying argument.
I am simply astonished that you can make this statement in the face of U.S. forces running away from Afghanistan.
[1]: https://www.the-sun.com/news/3448281/taliban-grabbing-girls-...
I do think that in case of armed resistance, US government will step back instead of nuking Oklahoma City.
Also, search "chechen wars". Large well-equipped Russian army with tanks, artillery and air force lost to people armed with AK's, determination and grassroots support from locals.
For more recent example see what happened in Afghanistan. The best the most powerful army on the planet could do is sitting inside their bases with multiple security perimeters.
I'd welcome any evidence that they're of much use for that. I see too many mixed outcomes (private arms aiding in the installation of tyrannical government, notably, of which I'm aware of way more examples than the reverse) and cases that are too different to compare—every single example I'm aware of involves extensive foreign intervention and/or resistance to a foreign occupier, which is very different.
I think the odds of an armed US militia resisting tyranny being popular enough not to end up being opposed by even more armed militia who are pro tyranny, in a situation in which the military is not also mostly on the anti-tyranny side, is effectively zero. I think the reverse is far more likely (private arms supporting tyranny). I'd welcome evidence that would change this view, but as far as I can tell the scales strongly lean toward my take.
…
> I'm aware of involves extensive foreign intervention and/or resistance to a foreign occupier, which is very different.
You say they are different, but you don’t say why.
Effectively all you are doing is dismissing the evidence without reasoning.
Sorry, didn't occur to me to note the differences. The incentives, motivations, goals, costs, and resources for a foreign government fighting on your soil are all very from your own government fighting a civil war or dealing with a domestic, guerrilla resistance, are the main things.
I remain unconvinced that private arms are likely to be any kind of useful factor in resisting tyranny in a developed country, and also unconvinced that they're more likely to be used to that end than in service of the precisely the opposite purpose, even if they were useful for tyranny-resistance to begin with.
That really doesn’t explain anything at all. It’s another way of saying they aren’t the same in various ways.
> also unconvinced that they're more likely to be used to that end than in service of the precisely the opposite purpose
This is an interesting political idea that bears a lot more elaboration, but seems unconnected in principle to the other point.
Yes, I guess I just... figured it was extremely obvious that a foreign occupation resisted by locals and a civil war or domestic insurgency are very different, largely on those categories. I feel like I'm being asked to defend the statement that bicycles and airplanes are, though both modes of transportation, quite different in a bunch of important ways.
I’m not asking you to arbitrarily explain how they are different. I’m asking you to explain how and why the differences you are thinking of make guns useless for civilians to own.
Aggregating the differences, part of it is that the stakes are so much lower in a foreign occupation and that withdrawal to save any of several sorts of costs involved is an option that won't result in the toppling of the occupying state's government or loss of any of the occupying state's core territory or sovereignty, and the other part (also mentioned in my post) is that it's very common for a successful insurgency or rebellion [edit: against foreign occupiers, I mean, in this case] to have foreign aid, which often exceeds the benefit of private arms to such a degree that it's not clear a few folks having AKs mattered at all, so even in such cases–which are already quite different from a domestic conflict—it's usually not clear-cut that private arms made much difference.
It'd help for the analysis if a state with a modern maneuver-focus equipped-and-trained army had faced a realistic domestic threat from rebels bearing private small arms... like, ever. There've been revolutions in such states (Russia, mainly—I'm actually struggling to think of another, since even the ones with maneuver-focus equipment usually hadn't managed the training for it, so fight very differently), but they've not really been the result of civil wars or armed insurrections. Such militaries have lost abroad, but not domestically, and usually against an enemy with one or more foreign state backers—and not by actual, outright defeat on the battlefield, but by convincing the occupier (the political leadership, not the military—they're usually not routes due to loss of morale) to cut their losses and go home. I strongly suspect that the circumstances that would render private arms enough to be any meaningful part of successful resistance against such a state in a civil war or insurrection, would also mean they weren't necessary for that success in the first place—that is, the circumstances would include such overwhelming and enthusiastic support from the populace, and/or enough support from the military, that a bunch of civilian-owned rifles wouldn't much matter for the outcome. There may be some narrow, unlikely set of circumstances in which they're really be the deciding factor, but at that point the cost/risk of keeping them around would have to be incredibly low to justify doing so specifically on the grounds that they're very important for resisting tyranny (there are other justifications for firearms ownership, of course).
Your argument is that during an occupation civilians owning guns already in the occupied country doesn’t matter because another country will come in and arm them?
You seem to be restating your position a few times in more words - I.e. that examples of resistance to foreign opposition are not relevant, and that guns wouldn’t be relevant in then scenarios you can imagine.
Can you try condensing the actual argument into a short paragraph?
It’s not clear what scenario you are imagining in which the weapons wouldn’t help. How about just outlining the scenario you are thinking about clearly?
>I think the reverse is far more likely (private arms supporting tyranny)
They would need to overpower gov AND the privately armed non-supporters. Compared to only the gov if the people would not be armed. (unless you assume the tyranny group is actually unarmed because they follow the law but this seems weird highly tyrannical and criminal groups all over the world always find a way to arm themself even in places where private people dont have guns.)
The role they play is usually as part of a deniable dirty-work militia, or in cases in which the military sits out the conflict (usually a very bad sign for whoever's in power, tyrannical or not). In some cases in which the government is very ineffective and has a shit army, they can help—but again, I'm aware of that working in cases like the Cuban revolution, which wasn't exactly a blow struck for liberty, and it requires that the government has poor support and is very weak to begin with.
Ask the Taliban.
A government is a parasitic organism. Quashing resistance only makes sense if it's cost-effective. E.g. nuking your own country is insane; at some point, it's just cheaper to compromise.
Remember that bin Laden fought off the Soviets using an MBA, an inherited construction company, and billions of dollars of foreign funding. Militias don't exist in isolation from the world.
edit: we don't believe those in government with the inclination towards tyranny are sufficiently competent. There are individuals, in government in Australia, in the same house even if they're are not quite at the centre of power, who are good admirable competent people. And there are those whose fantasies bend towards tyranny. They are not the same people. And then there is the great morass along for the ride and the cushy pension.
I want to vote on policy I care about and understand, not a person I've never met who I can't necessarily trust that's meant to represent me.
The system has failed. I was horrified to see how far we'd fallen. When COVID hit, I thought they'd at least have some basic model on the shelf to extrapolate a response from.
Nope. All that kind of forward thinking seems to have gone along with the brain drain of the CSIRO and everything that followed. All the smart people have already left.
We're now governed by passive-reactive puppets.
At least you can understand tyranny. Possibly intentional incompetence not so much. Welcome to the misinformation age. Who knew it would start so soon after the information age.
> I want to vote on policy I care about and understand, not a person I've never met who I can't necessarily trust that's meant to represent me.
Representative democracy is designed as a compromise between giving power to the people and giving (what's perceived as) too much power to the people.
In the case of a true direct democracy, many fear the ignorance and apathy of the average voter, and wonder if the majority rule would lead to tribalism and repression of minorities. That said, the few actual examples of direct democracy don't really seem to have borne these fears out.
In a way it comes down to how much (or little) confidence you have in your fellow citizen; "the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter," and all that. I veer towards misanthropy, so from that perspective direct democracy doesn't do a lot for me... seems like there's no perfect system.
I'm more concerned about power vacuums created by value extraction. We were swindled without realising it, in fact some of us enjoyed it - but only because we don't know what we lost. There can be very weird dynamics at play. Unfortunately the descendants of those are eventually left holding the bag and find out what they lost.
I would amend things such that if the Peasants were happy and everyone else was busy then Confucius is happy (because he's not being disturbed). I actually hope for more happy than that, but I'll take what I can get.
The main part of the problem with achieving the perfect system is that it has to also resolve all of the already imperfect systems in play. And you need to work out 'who' gets to define perfection.
I don't believe this, but I empathise with your fury.
There has just been a small Covid outbreak in my town. The organisation of the response (all local - not federal) has been phenomenal, straight up inspiring.
But we are also the inheritors of a long legacy of stupid and brutal, and it can be hard to look around and believe that now is better than it was. How could this possibly be better? The gutting of CSIRO is a tragedy, but it's short term gain for tragedies all the way down.
I think Australia today is different better society than the country a century ago, we are iterating of a base of absolute monarchy and entrenched power, and it seems as we have got comfortable, and many of us are comfortable, many of us have stopped pushing.
There's a book on historical protest movements in Australia by Jeff Sparrow. It was an eye opener for me to see that actually things were even worse a century ago, the way fear of communist infiltration was used to control society, was even more clumsy, and more successful than the garbage we encounter today. The story of the Hilton Hotel bombing in the 70s is so clumsy it would be hilarious if lives weren't ruined. ASIO planted a fake bomb (which they intended to find and they use to justify further funding), which actually blew up, and then the Indian representative (was it the ambassador or the Prime Minister?) declared it was a terrorist attack against him, so ASIO had to find a hippy to arrest, so they did and they got away with it.
SIGH. This isn't true and I wish Americans would stop saying it. You can own guns down here, even keep them in your house. Sure, you're limited to bolt actions/side by sides, etc; but there is a healthy shooting community down here. For instance, I've got a mate who owns 7 rifles, the largest of which is a .338 Lapua.
What Australia did was break the 'gun culture' down here and ban semi-autos, pump actions, etc. And let's be honest, I'd take that over the 18 million ARs in circulation in the USA every day of the week. Not having semi-autos is preferable to daily shootings in the community.
Chomsky and many others have been warning that corporate and political interests are infringing on the (increasingly centralised) media and other institutions for several decades. Questions around the strength of democratic institutions are raised regularly, with the various Trump sagas being a prominent recent example. Australia has been the test-run (or the canary in the coalmine, depending on your view) for privacy-destroying legislation -- following the footsteps and wishes of the NSA, of course. Declines in public education and communication infrastructure, widespread political apathy? Join the club.
The pervasive corruption in every major institution of our society, which grows by the day, is a testament to this.
It didn't devolve into a end of the world apocalypse scenario that you'd imagine. Humans are incredibly resilient and they really just want to get on with their lives and be left alone. I guess they do so by compartmentalizing and rationalizing away things happening outside of their immediate view. It's the "easy" aspect of being able to tell politicians to "meddle" with other people and spend "other" people's money that gets them enthusiastic because it requires very little effort.
I haven't thought of it exactly like that, but I appreciate (whilst shuddering) your take on things.
I basically see it in a similar way, that its a sinking stepping stone the UK was using to get further ahead, but lost its hold/interest because of US dominance (which the UK kind of gave birth to in a strange way due to its self-important superiority complex).
It still seems to me like they're trying to squeeze all the value out of it onto other continents (or tiny tax havens) and multinational corporations so that nothing of value is left [1]. Whilst doing it with just enough plausible deniability (e.g. the stolen generation) and fake sincerity to try to pass as genuine.
Unfortunately I still live here.
I'm not a beach person, it's not my SOMA. Instead of Brave New World or 1984, I think it'll end up more like V for Vendetta. Unfortunately they seemed to be astute enough to put our Federal parliament house in the middle of a roundabout in an arbitrary out of the way place called Canberra.
I also love to read this kind of parallel between fiction and reality. However, when you have some experience working in defense you find out reality is more like: there's real criminal to catch, real victims to protect and to save, it's not like we have any time for non critical stuff such as going after pacific dissidents, and controlling all the medias like in V would be so much work and pointless it's not even considered.
About Exxon, well international finance is particularly hard indeed which you'll find out quite fast you start working in the AML sector, but guess what we* are making progress. But let's face it as scientists: there will be no silver bullet. All we have left is to compare cost/benefit ratios of different compromises. As such, you will always find a single case of something to complain about on some tech forum if that's what you get your kicks from.
*we: people who are actively working on it rather than complaining anonymously about single cases and making generalities about it in order to propagate some agitation on some obscure tech forum to predict a future like in a teenager comic book
It's funny here, users complain about Exxon and others having unethical behaviors or even breaking the law, I relate to that, but at the same time they are against using tech they create to increase security. How do you live in such a contradiction? Not to mention mass surveillance will create tech jobs you are probably part of the small number of people who can apply and get hired and actually work on it with their own ethic.
This is wildly self-serving. Security services all over the world absolutely go after dissidents and whistle-blower and many other undesirables. Just look at the COINTELPRO papers in the USA to see this, for a well documented historic example from a free country - not only were security services investigating peaceful protesters, they were actively infiltrating, trying to coerce them to commit crimes, blackmailing MLK into committing suicide, they payed for the assassination of the Black Panthers leader and many others.
Or look at the recent 'governor kidnapping plot', bravely foiled by intelligence services, who were actually 10 of the 12 people in on the 'plot'...
> at the same time they are against using tech they create to increase security. How do you live in such a contradiction? Not to mention mass surveillance will create tech jobs you are probably part of the small number of people who can apply and get hired and actually work on it with their own ethic.
A solution to a problem can be worse than the problem. I am all for solutions to the huge number of car fatalities, but that doesn't mean I support banning cars, even though that would fix the problem. Surveillance states create way more problems than they solve, and are invariably used against political minorities. The ethics of individual operators are irrelevant - if the institutional drive is there, workers will be selected until they match the institutional drive.
There's also the communist party, well I guess that's over now you're absolutely free to be communist, same goes for feminism.
And the groups in question have all won, their ideologies have won, you know have blacks, muslims, feminists, communists inside probably every government agency - even though, they will probably not be extremists, and love their country.
If these ideologies have won, and that freedom has stabilized for everyone, what's the point of going into yet another civil war now? If you agree it's pointless, then why are you afraid that the government would go after you if you are not dangerous?
You're saying the ethics of individual operators are irrelevant, does that mean you think that the ethic of Minutemen was irrelevant? It's half the story from my point of view, even you are criticizing their ethics ("trying to coerce into committing crimes").
Psychological warfare goes both ways you know, for a government to try to counter it seems pretty sane to me. It's not like you're not free nor have many means to publish all the agitation propaganda you want these days.
But we get it, you just want to keep your tech to overthrow elected governments instead helping the government to protect your family and people, because "solutions can create more problems than they solve": let's not do anything about our security problems and let's especially not try more tech nor tech upgrades.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22yqoDs1_TE
In our current world societies the university students are the most important visible protestors, because they're the smartest people that have the most to lose from incoming forced change. They're young and they see personal freedom disappearing.
However given the recent selling out nature of universities in Australia, we might lose this early-warning signal too...
Canada: A "filmmaker" claims that one of the police officers had a rock in their hand, why would I believe a "documentary filmmaker" without any actual evidence (you'd expect a video evidence from the guy) participating in a protest more than actual police officers? or than the minister of public safety? or than the journalist who obviously could not verify it and as such did no mention it?
There's only one logical reason that comes to my mind: because you want to, like the person who choose the title "Canadian Undercover Police Officers Caught Trying to Start a Riot", that's not an honest title, "Canadian Filmmaker Pretends Police Officers Tried to Start a Riot" would have been actually honest. Who's manipulating who now?
Nice description under the video too, but it's only one side of the story: we also hold tons of evidence that people actually lie and plan to lie just to cause agitation, protests and so on. Is that something that you would be interested in as well? Or are you just interested in "anything against the elected government"?
If you dig deeper, there are(/were?) other video sources that had the union leader saying things along the lines of "this guys not with us, we don't know who he is, take of your mask and protest peacefully like the rest of us". The Canadian police got caught out trying to incite things presumably for political grandstanding.
Trust in authority is broken for those of us aware enough of it.
The students have the most 'potential future value' to lose, that's why they fight the most. They're fighting for the possibility to be the smartest rather than have it denied and have their freedoms conformed by the powers that are attempting to dictate.
It's actually in the video you posted so I've seen it. They were there with masks, they were not protesting, but they were standing peacefully: that is what I see in the video.
> The Canadian police got caught out trying to incite things
That's why I was talking about the "rock in their hands" part of the story because that's the only part that would be valuable at all to support the claim that they were there to "incite".
But actually you're probably wondering about the reason why they are dressed like other violent protesters (which we can see in an earlier part of the video in another street), there's a reason for that, and it's pretty simple: it makes it easier to catch them. And when you do you're burned so it's not like the costume is going to last forever.
Why did they then go to the peaceful street then? Because they were expecting the violent protesters from the other street to refuge there and take off their masks and blend in with the peaceful protesters. By being there first they could have caught them, but the "peaceful protestors" who "caught them" didn't let them do their job.
I don't believe one second that they did that to incite things, that they would be throwing rocks at their own colleagues, and have seen absolutely no reason let alone any evidence to think otherwise.
But even if their presence did incite you, then you would get caught extremely fast, and that would probably be a better ending for everybody including yourself, before you become a bigger danger.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ6cdLNWzlI
This is what happens when you don't have continuity/all the pieces.
Watch it and weep. Welcome to the misinformation age. John Perry-Barlow was right.
This was from 2011. They've presumably gotten a lot better at it now.
He's facing the crowd of actually masked protesters, surveilling them which is probably why he got caught, they completely outnumber him, which makes me thinks it's probably better for his defense to hold a rock in his hands.
I mean, look at this crowd of masked people, some even wearing gasmasks, holding red flags, with god knows what in their backpacks, claiming that the infiltrated agents are there to "provoke them", what a joke of bad faith.
You don't want them to do that? Letting them do more preventive surveillance would be a solution then, that'd be an upgrade for everyone. But you don't want that either so I guess we're stuck in this status quo.
I was mainly thinking of us approaching the 'state of the nation' in the comic/movie before 'V' etc. started fighting back. Not the whole interrupted broadcast attack part.
Things have mostly worked out pretty well for Keith Rupert Murdoch, although he's getting pretty old now. Unfortunately he is nothing like 'V'.
With regards to AML: You can't tell if you're making progress if you don't have all the pieces.
Your last paragraph is nonsense and your using it to justify your own identity. Your last sentence terrifies me. It means you have no idea whats going on either and have sold out or bought in to something you don't completely understand.
You're still daydreaming about civil war, maybe that's why you're so scared of your own ethics?
> With regards to AML: You can't tell if you're making progress if you don't have all the pieces.
Yes, I can tell there are many competent people working daily on the AML problems, more tech is created, more laws are created, more offenders get caught: and I dare call that "making progress".
It's actually a striving sector because financial institutions such as banks get fined for when they don't try their best and that itself creates a lot of budget to make even more progress.
> Your last paragraph is nonsense and your using it to justify your own identity. Your last sentence terrifies me. It means you have no idea whats going on either and have sold out or bought in to something you don't completely understand.
Absolutely, you're part of the little number of people who are aware and know, and I'm part of the majority of ignorant people. Nice argumentation by the way! (jk, you're just meaninglessly trying to maintain the status quo).
Please, give me access to a surveillance codebase. I’ll do everything in my power to destroy it and it’s backups.
Reality is: people want more security, that's part of their expectations from paying taxes, mass surveillance offers just that.
They want to choose a doctor instead of choosing their treatment, unlike you, they don't fantasize on being aware of every aspect of all politics, going to vote every day on every amendment, they just want professionals to do their job just like they do theirs, they accept that these can make mistakes, or not do exactly what they would have because yes, they have their job and their families - which, you know, is two jobs already - to take care of rather than "they prefer to spend their days at the beach".
Politics turned to Left-wing/Green party vs AFD and there is no middle ground anymore. The FDP basically disappeared and there’s a cliff in society over things like the refugee crisis and Merkel’s “everyone is welcome here” politics.
If I’d ever come back to Europe, I’d settle in Switzerland. It just is the better Germany(at least to me).
Isn't there a grand coalition in Germany for most of the last 15 years between the center-left and center-right which did very well?
With all the scaremongering about a growing right wing party like the AfD, many Germans fail to realize its supporters have always been there and never grew in numbers but before Merkel had been represented by a caucus inside the most popular parties. There have been various connections inside the CDU and the “Seeheimer Kreis” in the SPD that have become marginalized during the Merkel years with her overly pragmatic and uninspired way of administering a whole country and not committing to any visible political principles.
As a famous German conservative politician of the 1970s once said: „There must never be a political party establishing itself on the right side of the CDU“ (or it‘ll be the end of its dominating power). Exactly that, leaving room for the AfD, was one of Merkel‘s biggest mistakes and it’s going to haunt Germany‘s politics for many years to come.
Is this intentionally ironic?
There is no contradiction. If you want to come to Canada, for example, you have to qualify for one of the programs, e.g. "Express Entry". That is, have education or better yet Canadian education, at least bachelor's degree but better PhD, experience or better yet Canadian experience, profession in a shortage list, proficiency of English and French, enough money for a year, be <35 y.o., have a husband/wife who also has all of those. If I have none of those, should I be welcome? What if I'm part of ISIS and has been sent to found an HQ in Toronto? You wouldn't invite everyone to your house indiscriminately. Why would you to your country (and then also feed them and house)?
This seems like such a bad idea. Ideally, the democratic process taps ‘the wisdom of crowds’ and allows a society to make reasonable decisions. But all human beings are not capable of contributing to good decision making. Roughly the 15% of people have IQs below 85, making them effectively mentally retarded. And beyond that, a huge number of people are grossly uninformed about contemporary political issues, history, science, etc. The best contribution that some folks can make to the democratic process is not participating in the democratic process.
Moreover, if you force the unintelligent and uninformed to vote, you’re empowering the media to run the country. When someone’s politics are uninformed by firmly held principals and a solid understanding of history and current events, they will be more susceptible to be steered by biased media.
You've misunderstood my comment. I'm not saying that we should prevent unintelligent people from voting, I'm saying we shouldn't actively seek out their input by compelling them to vote.
We know that poorly educated people are the least likely to vote, and we know that educational achievement correlates strongly with IQ--so by requiring voting, you will be significantly increasing the proportion of voters who are not intellectually capable of making an informed decision about how we can run a society.
You do not seek out the advice of the least intelligent people you know. Even if, out of a stubborn commitment to egalitarian ideals, you did ask for their advice, you'd be a fool to weight it equally with the people who you hold in high regard. So why the hell would we, as a society, choose to do so by compelling the vote?
Government should be for everyone. Parties should have a platform that is for a majority. For the most part, Australia has populist fairly centrist small c conservative governments.
It's getting bad at the moment here mostly because the current governing party is past due for it's turn on the opposition benches. And it also seems that everyone's having a go at being corrupt at the moment. Hopefully we get ontop of that.
Anyway, folk with low IQ's making bad choices isn't really a problem. We have optional preferential voting (rank choice), it's hard enough to make an informed decision above or below the line each time and I do research!
Most of the uniformed, just vote along family lines.
Anyway, everyone has a right to vote and a duty in some respect. Making it harder for some, by making it opt in, will lead to more problems then having disengaged voters participating in haphazard ways.
Pretend you're an Australian and have a long tradition of fining people minor sums of money for not showing up. Why would you change to non-compulsory voting?
Say you have the right to own property. That comes with the obligation to respect other people's property. And so on.
When a right comes obligations it isn't a right. It's a privilege. That's the stuff kings used to have (and still have, in some places).
You don't seek out the advice of the mentally retarded when making personal decisions. Why would you do so when determining how to run your society?
> Most of the uniformed, just vote along family lines.
The point of a democratic elections is to get the considered input of the population. People who 'just vote along family lines' are noise in the signal. If they want to, then fine. But why would you force them to contribute their arbitrary, uninformed opinions?
> Anyway, everyone has a right to vote and a duty in some respect.
Of course they do.
> Making it harder for some, by making it opt in, will lead to more problems then having disengaged voters participating in haphazard ways.
This is nonsense. Forcing older kids to go to school doesn't result in more engaged school-kids, it results in rooms full of angry, disengaged kids who cause problems for the people who want to be there. Similarly, forcing people to vote just adds a bunch of random votes to the pile.
Democracy is a great thing. But democracy doesn't work because more human hands touching ballots makes for better government--it works because you can get good advice by asking the input of a large number of responsible, conscientious people.
We know that the least educated among us are the least likely to vote. We also know that IQ predicts academic achievement. So why would you go out of your way to increase the proportion of Prec
You're thinking of the role of democracy as a way to solve problems, but it also plays a role in fairly allocating resources between sectors of society. The IQ < 85 demographic might not seem valuable to the IQ > 115 demographic, but in fact that is why they need to vote, to counterbalance the self-interest of the IQ > 115 demographic. Likewise, PhDs in political science might be prone to think that highschool dropouts are not valuable contributors, but that is exactly why highschool dropouts need to vote - to counterbalance the will of the political science PhDs to support policies that only help PhDs.
I would argue that largely happens today, but not on the basis of IQ. Large chunks of western countries believe all sorts of (what I would consider) crazy things. And IQ isn't the driving force of belief here.
None of this is an argument to disenfranchise segments of the populace. But it is also increasingly naive to believe that voters vote on the basis of rational self-interest, and we need to have serious discussions about how to counter the forces that drive that, be it IQ, misinformation, in-group/out-group dynamics and more.
There is a natural experiment on this. See which countries have compulsory voting and see how they have fared since. The results are not pretty.
On the flipside, the strongest "free" countries, switzerland and USA, have had voluntary parricipation since time immemorial...
To me, "moralizing" is when I tell you to not do something that I don't like but which doesn't directly affect me. Like, don't drink alcohol to excess, or don't cheat at cards, or don't swear in front of kids, or always tell the truth.
I have an opinion that media diversity benefits society, and I don't consider that "moralizing". I consider it caring about my community, and I consider opposing media monopoly to be fighting back against an individual who would denigrate society for his own ends. That's not moralizing - that's standing up for ourselves.
> Moralize definition, to reflect on or express opinions about something in terms of right and wrong, especially in a self-righteous or tiresome way
Which is roughly what you (and the rest of the social justice crowd and, apparently, western Europe) just did.
The abolition (of slavery) movement in the 19th century was a moralizing one. And they were very right!
The irony is when one proclaims not to be moralizing in their argument, but are indeed making a moral argument, insistently, including the insistence they aren't moralizing.
The challenge is that to anyone who doesn't want to hear the message, having something be repeated continuously is frustratingly annoying. And it sure doesn't help any overall movement when specific extremes of that movement, or cherry-picked instances of that movement can be highlighted as representing the whole thing. This is certainly factor in the increasing polarization of society, for if the other-side is full of moralizing assholes, why should I bother listening to them? Especially if they are just going to keep repeating their same tired BS? This can apply to both sides of some many contemporary debates - independent of the merit of either side!
But the Great Barrier Reef is definitely no endangered, because UNESCO says so!!!
Australia is a joke of a country. It's just a Texas with ocean.
Unfortunately it's worse than that, at least Texas has significant fiber infrastructure and quality high-speed Internet, some basic understanding of personal freedom and respect for individual privacy, and low enough property costs and taxes that normal average people can survive comfortably there, not just those blessed with a corporate job. Also in Texas, hobbies aren't banned simply because it might upset some Karens.
Australia is following in the footsteps of the worst facets of China, with also having the worst facets of Texas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...
Excluding the gun deaths and socialised health care of course. Those are two things that Australia has unambiguously gotten right that Texas and/or the US seems incapable of addressing.
It's called California.
To the point of the post, though — I'm not so worried about surveillance in Australia. The bigger worry for me is the lack of our population's interest in real issues. When the level of surveillance does become a real issue, will our population even care?
It has no personal freedoms, but on the other side they have HDBs(government housing) which is affordable for their residents.
Australia has no affordable housing alternatives at all and the government doesn't even seem to care.
Australia has more freedoms than Singapore, but far less than Europe.
The US is decades ahead of Australia in terms of its descent into a corporate-owned shitshow.
Apparently North Korea is terrible compared to Australia. And yet the parent's comment was also not about North Korea and nor is the linked article. We could run the gamut on countries, there are another hundred plus after North Korea that are not great places to live compared to the affluent top.
Australia is very neoliberal but so are many countries in Europe. Though there is a lot of difference between EU countries. The Nordic countries and Germany are a lot less like this.
But between Australia and the Netherlands there isn't actually that much difference when it comes to corporate interests running the country. PS I've lived in Australia a couple years too :)
This bit - as well as the overall comment in general - describes nearly every Western democracy at this point. Yes, there are variations but the arc is similar overall.
The issues and narratives come down from higher up and are distributed via tightly owned (read: powerful) media conglomerates. It's simply one distraction after another. The collective memory of the masses resembles - pardon the editorial - a gold fish.
The idea that the internet would open hearts and minds has yet to materialize as promised. Perhaps it's time to prepare for the realization that it never will? Or at least stop being so naive as to think that it wouldn't be used against us? Because as it is, it is.
An Australian Youtuber who focuses on topics related to macro economy actually touched this subject. Here is the video.
"Why Australia is Actually an American Company" by Economics Explained (2020)
Not a bad metaphor. I've always thought of it as kind of like Puerto Rico: essentially a US state, but without any of the good things that come with that. Like, you know, basic human rights such as freedom of speech. We have all the crony capitalism, oligarchy, and pseudo-democracy, but none of the fun stuff that the seppos have. And shitty internet.
But hey, there are beaches. And footy. If that's your thing.
Since leaving the USA and moving to Australia I've come to the conclusion that the USA is in a unstoppable decline and will continue to degrade, both in terms of society and infrastructure, for the foreseeable future. And say what you will about Australia being a driven by corporate interests but one thing we've gotten right in comparison to the rest of the Western world is our insistence of handling the pandemic correctly, ie placing human life over the short term economic interests of the upper class.
We lock down in Western Australia when we have one case of COVID in the community. I don't believe ANY European or North American country can say the same. Who's beholden to corporate interests again?
Sounds like Australia has got ideas from CCP.
This is sounding an awful lot like the Dems in the US
There was practically no opposition to the meta data laws. No popular resistance. No protests. It’s a non-issue for the public or political class.
The extent to which non-tech people in my social circles care is to switch to signal. Not that they’ve stopped using the other tools.
There seems to be a “what else can we do” attitude.
Unfortunately, there is also no other party to vote for, as both major parties (liberal and labour) hold the same policies on ‘national security’.
Metadata logging is a theoretical issue while the lack of vaccine supplies is a very real and immediate issue.
I remember it was after the shooting in Sydney by an Iranian refugee who had not only just been in custody but had arrive under the pretence that he was an Iranian spy seeking asylum. They had every reason to surveil the guy under normal laws but used it as an excuse to justify a drag net approach. It was obviously an Orwellian trick but no one cared.
Freedom should not be so whimsically thrown away, getting it back will be impossible through normal means.
There are over 350,000 requests a year for metadata, about ~1000 a day. Any level of government can make a request, right down to local councils of towns with 2000 people. The oversight committee is comprised of three bureaucrats who have never found a single instance of the system being abused in years. In fact all the instances of misuse have been self-reported by agencies.
Metadata itself seems like an innocuous term but includes the location of every single mobile phone in the country. The enormous cost of all this is passed onto the consumer and the government doesn't subsidise reporting entities at all.
What exactly is "theoretical" about all that?
Sorry, who's the consumer in this? Can you explain more?
Possibly, for the political class, metadata logging is THE issue of the moment.
Hell the premier implemented a curfew and said it was due to public health advice, the public health advisors denied it, then he said it was on the advice of the police, and they denied, and that was that. No further questions asked why we implemented a curfew for fun. In this environment it's positively quaint the idea that our cyber laws are the thin edge of the wedge.
I would leave, but like North Korea, it's against the law for citizens to leave the country.
The relationship the media has with government is disturbing but I guess they are bought and paid for now that the News Media Bargaining Code is a thing.
With due credit to your friends they kind of have a point with the Assistance and Acess Act 2018 in effect. How do they know that the signal app they are downloading is the real deal.
Read up about Firearm Prohibition Orders in NSW too. No need for judges or warrants if you have a rookie police officer and a police commissioner.
The bikie laws in Queensland.
Permits for protests which can denied on the basis of ‘harmed local commercial interests’.
Terror police being sent after the friendlyjordies.
Let alone the corruption (nsw libs, barrier reef grant, detention Center security contracts) & complete lack of accountability (Angus Taylor)
It was sad to see the recent protests in the name of ‘freedom’, when in reality it was about government support. Which I support them to get, it just saddens me that that’s the extent of collective action.
What?
Security from who?
I can’t stress this enough. The Australian tech industry is a failing joke. You are being grossly underpaid. The country _is_ an authoritarian surveillance state and has been for years and years. The frog boiled and died years ago. Peace out, and find somewhere that will treat you well.
No easy choice there, unfortunately.
Being a dual national (Schengen/Europe) there’s honestly not that many places in Europe where software pays all that well. Vienna surprised me with how many salaries sit between 40-50K euros for senior positions.
Yikes.
This is like government being infested by cancel culture (attack w/ no evidence needed, pile on & take down).
What phenomenon is driving this?
e.g political opportunism under the pretense of covid / protection?
Later, of course, some politician will abuse this power. But then it's too late. You cannot assemble anymore because your messengers will be disabled/censored. You cannot speak freely anymore because your home assistant will rat you, apple style. You cannot even move freely anymore because your car and your public transportation will be tied to your digital persona and your social score. Of course you can forget about paying for something because both cash and cryptocurrency will be outlawed.
There's a term for it: Wowsers [0] - people who police others' behaviour. The Wowsers and the Larrikins [1] battle for Australia's soul. The Wowsers are winning.
Appealing to Australia's Wowsers is always politically beneficial. Any law that strengthens police powers goes over really well.
And then add Murdoch, who owns all the newspapers, controls both major parties, and hates the internet with a passion (because it's destroying his business and power base).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wowser [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrikin
@tfswebb https://twitter.com/tfswebb/status/976299234491121665
Read Davidson/Rees-Mogg: Sovereign Individual (1999)
Basic thesis: violence's utility declines in the information age. The institutions that are built on it, like nation states, go through a phase of decline and decay, during which they make rather more arbitrary use of force in a desperate attempt to resist obsolescence.
Is he named Jacob or William. What is this bullshit?
It's just like Boris. I mean Alexander.
Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson. Jacob William Rees-Mogg.
How are we governed by people who can't even consistently name themselves? Or are they going for plausible deniability?
Attacking someone for their name is a flimsy stand. If they have done something dodgy, that would go much further to supporting any argument you may be making.
I think previous iterations of existence use names to transfer karmic information for individuals, but we're now at the point that the system is understood well enough by the systemised to game the system itself.
I often wonder about the importance of naming things. Its also a key problem in Computer Science.
Namespacing is useful up to a point. Value can change depending on context.
In the first season of The Crown they make you notice that the Queen double 'Elizabeth'ed herself.
But if the value the name had no longer applies given the actions of the namee carrying out other actions instead, is the name still meaningful or valid or just historically valid or muddled?
I think there's more going on here than you think.
William Rees-Mogg, the co-author of the suggested book, was the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg.
I'm so worried about them shuffling names around to suit circumstances I err'd on the wrong side. As an outcast (Australian) trying to look in from far away its frightfully confusing. I mean there's that Saxe-Coburg thing for a start...
'Boris' still annoys the crap out of me though. Does the UK also have an 'actor' as its prime minister? Is he intentionally mishandling umbrella's or not? At least Ronald Reagan was already 'out' as an actor.
I deserved the downvotes, but I have learned.
My point about naming things is still completely valid though. It's hard to have the 'right amount of name' without causing confusion.
Having spend time in SE Asia, I’ve found the “collective mindset” to be inaccurate. People there are just as likely to screw over their fellow man as any other country.
What’s different is the deference to authority. When the govt cracks down, people don’t really complain or push back. They accept it much more readily. Not sure if it’s the belief that leaders need an “iron will” or what, but it’s very different than North America or Europe where protesting the govt is almost expected.
You can tell by the amount of racism that is permitted.
Also, can a White person truly be Singaporean?
And yes, you a white person can be Singaporean. There aren't many, but there are Singaporean politicians who are white but Singaporean by birth.
I guess HK and Singapore are multicultural in that you are rather limited in what you can assume is general knowledge.
They don't seem anywhere near as multicultural as places where you hear a wide variety of ethnic groups using the same kind of accent though.
Your scenario is far more unlikely, if not impossible.
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
Look at the sheer amount of backhaul between just the US and Japan. Now take all that traffic, stuff it down 1/10 of the amount of fiber pairs, with a fuckload more hops. You're telling me nothing will be affected and none will notice?
It wouldn't surprise me though given the CIA coup'd Australia back in the 70s over Pine Gap (their spy facility in Australia).
Easy to see that the war on terror dominated security policies for the last two decades in many countries, not only the five eyes. Officials build their image on that, being tough on X.
Problem is that there isn't any effective opposition because people are afraid of everything these days.
I make pretty decent money but buying a home anywhere that isn’t several hours commute away from my entire life is an exercise in finding the most cramped shit hole imaginable.
We’re a country of cities with tiny zones of walkable inner city surrounded by Suburban sprawl so extreme that for instance Perth’s metro area spreads the further than distance from LA to San Diego!
We have a free media, our elections are free and fair, we have routine transfers of power, minor parties are well represented in our parliaments, and we're generally free express our minds and go about our lives.
The average Australian now has the wool over their eyes and is either ignorant of it or okay with it.
Err, we have a media which is in a symbiotic relationship with the government.
I would not consider this free.
There are few genuine journalists out there looking for the truth and they have little impact on the masses.
The one that did (Assange) has a trial going on as I type this.
I agree. We should defund the ABC and SBS.
> I would not consider this free.
Some journalists will always trade independence for access. However, I'm not aware of any evidence to indicate that Australian media has been captured by the government. But frankly, you've made a pretty nebulous accusation, followed up by a conclusion that doesn't necessary follow from the premise.
I'd invite you to study the recent happenings in Poland and Hungary to see what a non-free media landscape looks like.
> There are few genuine journalists out there looking for the truth and they have little impact on the masses.
We have a robust media that regularly holds the government to account. The main public broadcaster, in particular, puts out hard hitting journalism with broad reach.
So I don't know what this 'truth' is that you think 'they' are concealing from the 'masses'.
> The one that did (Assange) has a trial going on as I type this.
You make this sound like Assange was arrested for reporting he did on Australia. Wikileaks never made any major disclosures about Australia.
Anti Chinese rhetoric in Oz media and from their politicians has been strident.
It is quite possible that the 5 eyes are ramping up methods of internal control in expectation of a war with China.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-12/why-did-northern-terr...
Australia thinks it can control China, but without the influx of Chinese money the place is finished IMO.
When I landed at Sydney Airport in 2020, there were ads in Mandarin advertising EU passports for sale.
The previous generation of ethnic Chinese is better integrated, but the new generation is very patriotic and loyal to the communist party.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/hundreds-gather-in-sydney-for-po...
The West always hoped China would turn into a democracy, but that turned out to be an illusion. As long as maximising profits regardless of the consequences is a priority, this will continue.
It's often forgotten that China is and has always been playing the long game where in the West policies can change after the next election.
US stayed out of WWI for three years, but American trade with Germany was toast once the British started blocking German ships and ports.
It all depends on your perspective. Some people are more Australian than our politicians, yet they look Chinese. It's a massive melting pot of variations.
My opinion now is that the Crown (not the casino) is extracting all the value it can from Australia and then run it into the ground, and the other powers that be are doing it too.
If Australia ends up against China in conflict, a lot of people will be tearing themselves apart inside.
At the other extreme, a lot of Han Chinese see every other non Han Chinese human as inferior (in varying shades of inferiority). There are a lot of Han Chinese. This is a scary situation. The racism runs in both directions.
Not only that (which is very true). But some of the more racist Aussies aren't "white Australia" Anglo-Saxons.
[0], The biggest threat to Australia's future, https://time.com/4737800/meth-australia-ice-crystal-methamph...
[0]: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/why-is-james-packe...
[1]: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/fraudulent-scam-cr...
> We, the Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Immigration Ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, stand united in our commitment to protect our citizens from child predators, terrorists, violent extremists and other illicit actors. We are as determined to counter these threats online as we are to counter them in the physical world. We note with disappointment that senior digital industry leaders did not accept our invitation to engage on critical issues regarding the illicit use of online spaces at the 2018 Five Country Ministerial meeting. Nevertheless, we reiterate our determination to work together constructively to ensure our response is commensurate to the gravity of the threat. Our citizens expect online spaces to be safe, and are gravely concerned about illegal and illicit online content, particularly the online sexual exploitation of children. We stand united in affirming that the rule of law can and must prevail online. [2]
This was a joint statement made by the Department of Home Affairs around the time Assistance and Access Bill 2018 was being pushed through.
[1] https://www.itnews.com.au/news/australia-setting-itself-up-a...
[2] https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...
There have been few cases of people getting indoctrinated with ISIS videos and then doing terrorist attacks.
I can't stand how many rules there are now, just doesn't suit my personality type.
(And it stars Anna Torv, from "Fringe", but with her native accent! ;-)
Fringe and Mindhunter :)
Well that's an understatement...But it's not unique.
I recommend everyone watch it for a more detailed insight into the erosion and corruption of Australian liberty
So many European countries are now requiring people to ID themselves and get a QR code scanned at every shop, every restaurant, every public transport journey. All combining to a detailed digital record of who has been where. Under the guise of protecting against COVID but who says this will disappear once the pandemic is over?
I think we're going too far to accomodate those who won't get vaccinated. If everyone gets it, this scanning wouldn't be necessary (after all, vaccination is enough to get access). We're giving up a lot of privacy all of a sudden without any serious debate. The alternative (getting tested every 2 days) is not viable anyway so eventually everyone will get it. IMO we should just make it mandatory now and skip the privacy invasion. Give the people who refuse anyway a fine and leave it at that (there will be so few left not to be an issue). I'm not in favour of forcing it.
I'm surprised Australia is still so worried about terrorism though. It never really had an issue with it in the first place and it's no longer the monster of the week.
How do you force everyone to get it without the apparatus of the police state?
Develop a more deadly virus?
But it's not as bad as a detailed step by step log of every person's activities every day.
Also, I think some level of noncompliance should be accepted. The vaccines don't work 100% anyway, these are just a few more percent. The number of people opposed to vaccination in Europe is very low compared to the US. The vaccination rate will be more than high enough for decent protection.
We're never going to reduce the risk of covid to zero for an individual. Just like we're never going to reduce the risk of dying from cancer to zero. Some risk just has to be accepted as a fact of life.
They are, in the UK attached to you NHS number for example. But the question is, how you you force the non-compliant to comply? Form the set-difference of the NHS and national DBs, hunt down and inject the non-compliant? Sounds a bit police-statey to me. Or make daily life dependent on showing your NHS number? Easy to fake, so we'd need NHS photo id-cards to get a coffee, ... sounds a bit police-statey to me ... etc
Exactly, yet this is exactly what Germany, France and Italy are doing right now.
You need the QR code which contains your name / DOB + Photo ID
That said, I've not actually looked in to how these work... In Berlin at least, it's rare to get an ID check at a restaurant, usually someone just glances at your phone.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re...
edit: further: "The CovPassCheck app processes the QR code only in the working memory of the smartphone and does not store any data." [2]
[2] https://digitaler-impfnachweis-app.apps.public.bfarm.de/en/c...
Simply don't have police state totalitarian mandates.
"Simply don't have xy" doesn't work when the problem is actually real. The population will always choose safety or public health over some sort of libertarian daydream.
How does this work for those who don't own a smartphone?
And most countries that enforce this are in the EU.
With the previous covid detection apps (the covid API from Apple/Google) privacy was really a key design goal and I had no issues using that.
With these new QR apps (the EU CoronaCheck program) there was less of a focus on this. Part of that makes sense, as it's meant to identify the user's status it's not possible to be completely anonymous. But there has hardly been any info on whether the apps phone home. Also, the Apple/Google API apps from each country were almost all open source. None of that now. It's taken for granted that privacy is not a concern anymore, for some reason.
If every last man woman and child on the planet get vaccinated; if every mouse, cat, dog, ferret, pig, monkey and deer get vaccinated too, the potential for a breakout vaccine resistant infection is still there.
Also, there is still virtually zero talk of implementing vaccine exemptions for people with naturally acquired immunity, which seems superior in every way.
So, this isn't about "accommodating" the non vaccinated. It's not about safety, or science. It seems to be completely about control, complete control.
My country hasn't hired more nurses, built more ICU beds, legislated for or supported better air circulation indoors, or subsidised antigen testing - but they have implemented a vaccine passport for cafes and restaurants, against the advice of our council on civil liberties, our data privacy chief, and the WHO covid envoy. We're told it's a temporary measure, and I have no doubt that it will be as "temporary" as the Patriot Act.
Yeah this is what bothers me too. We're bound to see some more waves and continued pressure on the health system for a long time to come yet nothing seems to be done to actually fix that.
When Covid first hid the excuse was "we can't ramp up that quickly" but now that it's here to stay that excuse is still there. But every week they wait makes the wait even longer.
I agree natural immunity is good too. It's automatically adaptive to new variants (and the vaccine can help there as it'll be much less risky to get covid so everyone gets exposed to it a bit).
What I said about accomodating the unvaccinated, this was mainly because the government presents it as such. "We can't force vaccination so we have to check everyone every time". So many basic rights thrown in the trash without any debate. I agree there's probably ulterior motives. And I know it likely won't go away, this is why I'm so strongly against.
I think in the long term I will move to a country that doesn't do this. I've already been moving around all my life.
Yet you fell for government propaganda and report the fault on people who don't want to take part in clinical trial. The restriction of liberty with a vaccinal passport is purely a political choice and has nothing with health per se. A lot of countries are doing fine without it.
I agree a vaccine passport isn't necessary in these cases. I can see the benefit for international travel, but imposing it on every aspect of public life is a really invasive and unwarranted measure.
I don't think taking the vaccine is such a big deal, but I understand that others feel differently. I don't want to give up my privacy for their privilege though :)
The "threat of terrorism" has long been used by media and governments in a cynical way to demonize specific groups. The most common act of terrorism in Western countries in the past few years has been arson of historical churches, yet we almost never see mainstream reporting. On the other hand, we are constantly told of the "[insert group] terror threat" that turns up no actual terrorist acts.
The QR code is the vaccine passport. The test with the 2-day validity is simply another way to get it temporarily.
And if everyone is vaccinated, why do we still need to do contact tracing? The idea was that it doesn't have enough hosts to reach R > 1 so it'll fizzle out anyway.
This is what works in most EU countries now.
I'd much rather deal with some minor distancing instead of having to ID myself everywhere I go.
Also, most people in the UK have been vaccinated with AstraZeneca which is much less effective (and this Pollard guy has a huge commercial interest in that so this won't factor into his story)
They are hilarious and tell the naked truth.
Complete behind the scene control is not far away.
So there taking planting evidence digital?
An article talking about surveillance states that immediately pops up a request for a bunch of personal information.
I have no idea whose idea this is, and how many people actually subscribe on the first visit, but there must be some pointy haired boss somewhere involved.
ia.acs.org.au###subscribeModal
:)